


Sentiment

by ivoryandhorn



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Speculation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 23:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7661911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivoryandhorn/pseuds/ivoryandhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Angela Ziegler after the fall of Overwatch.</p><p>(Whatever <em>did</em> happen to Gabriel Reyes, anyway?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sentiment

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just starting to dip my toe into Overwatch's story stuff, so this is me feeling my way into Mercy's head.

Dr. Angela Ziegler and her staff were not the first responders to the rubble that had been Overwatch’s HQ in Switzerland. That solemn duty fell to Swiss public servants as, properly speaking, Dr. Ziegler and her staff ceased to exist as an organization once Overwatch suffered that final, explosive dissolution.

Still. The Swiss authorities called her in to consult on the survivors, and consult she did, with her encyclopedic knowledge of Overwatch agents’ various unique physiologies. Most of them she had transferred to her care, as she and her staff had the necessary equipment and confidential records to tend to injuries that stymied regular medical staff. Those agents who declined to were allowed to stay in the hands of the Swiss hospitals, with her blessing and farewell, as well as expedited records transfers.

Even the dead she had signed over to her custody. Even with Overwatch in its death throes, there was enough funding left for her to see those brave heroes to their final and proper rest, accorded all the honors due to agents of Overwatch. She made funeral arrangements for those of Blackwatch as well. The Swiss authorities could not access the Blackwatch agent database to find their next of kin and ensure the proper burial of their remains—but she could. 

The hospital staff were likely thinking—not unreasonably, she was sad to say—that most of the dead Blackwatch would be going into unmarked graves. They were criminals of the lowest kind, pressed into Overwatch’s service with varying combinations of stick and carrot. They were among those who were not missed and never would be, regardless of the service they had done to Overwatch and the world. No matter. Angela would take them anyway. She would find their names, and bury with love and honor each agent, with or without that agent’s loved ones. They, too, were heroes, whatever the world thought. 

Jack’s body was not among those recovered from the rubble. Perhaps it would be found as the final remains of the old HQ were sifted away, but Angela had little hope. The sifting was nearly done and she was approaching the last handful of survivors. She mourned and tried to think of him as he had been rather than as he had become, ruined meat crushed beneath mountains of metal and stone. 

Gabriel, however. He was the last patient she was ushered toward, recovered alive from the rubble, though only barely. No one recognized him as anything other than another anonymous Blackwatch agent. He had not been in the public eye for decades, now, consigned to the shadows with his division in the face of Jack’s ascension to Strike-Commander. But Angela knew him. She had been prepared to mourn him too, to lay his memory to rest like Jack’s, but he was not dead. He was alive.

As if in a dream, she marked him for transfer to her custody and finalized all remaining paperwork. Her mind was already roving over the items stockpiled in her lab, itself finalizing its end. It’s safes and freezers were yet stocked with devices and treatments confiscated from Overwatch’s dangerous foes or developed—by her or her colleagues—on spec for Overwatch or Blackwatch. 

Later, alone in her lab, with Gabriel unconscious next door, Angela pondered her store for long hours. Finally, she selected a certain serum confiscated from a certain individual who was now incarcerated for life in a certain maximum security facility. It was an innocuous-looking syringe, its clear body full of roiling dark matter. The dark matter’s properties were well-documented from that certain individual’s research notes and her own experiments; this was the last live sample extant, destined for biohazardous waste disposal. This she took with her to Gabriel’s bedside.

One day, she knew they would ask her what she had been thinking. This was a question that would entirely miss the point. She was not thinking at all. The same impulse that had led her to insist on an angel’s guise for her Valkyrie armor had seized control of her heart and limbs and brain, and what logic that remained was firmly yoked to her grief and her desperation. 

What she was thinking as she lined up the syringe to the ruin of Gabriel Reyes’ arm was: _Do no harm is the motto of my vocation, yet I have done immeasurable amounts of it in Overwatch’s name. If Gabriel were alive to look at himself, what I am doing now is exactly what he would tell me to do. He is an asset. He can be saved. He deserves a chance. Jack would say the same._

What she was thinking was: _Forgiveness is a gift I may never receive, but the possibility exists so long as the giver does. That is enough._

What she was thinking was: _I have lost so much so many of us are gone I cannot lose any more you must not go too please stay with us don’t leave stay with us live live live_

What she was thinking as she depressed the syringe and watched the black stuff sink into Gabriel’s veins was: 

_Heroes never die. I won’t allow it._

She sat back, and waited.


End file.
